


long live

by heartbreakage



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Shin Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Ken | Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou no Nazo | Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem
Genre: M/M, Pining, just canon mention of caeda/marth nothing too big, this is krismarth land lmfao but even then.... TASTEFULLY VAGUE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26702803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartbreakage/pseuds/heartbreakage
Summary: kris thinks, that if given the choice to die a knight’s death or stretch out a few more fleeting minutes with his first and last master, he’ll always take the latter.
Relationships: Marth/My Unit | Kris, Marth/Sheeda | Caeda
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	long live

**Author's Note:**

> just a little 'what-if' scenario from fe12 bad end :') i'm a sucker for pain + ambiguously homoerotic knight/king relationships so uhhh here's the word vomit that came out of that.

They hear the knights dying in the hallway.

Both imperial and free company falling to Dolhr invaders, the clatter of their swords and then wet, brutal dismemberments to follow after every desperate cry of ‘long live the Hero-King!’. Kris considers briefly on joining his compatriots in their noble, hopeless struggles to the death, but then he thinks that if given the choice to die a knight’s death or stretch out a few more fleeting minutes with his first and last master, he’ll always take the latter. 

Sir Cain had likely figured as much anyways when he took the rest of their troop to their stations at the castle gates without him. The fact that the rebels even reached this far into the palace meant that they were likely already slain. They don't have the time to mourn them, but for as bravely little as Marth outwardly shows, he knows there must already be a glittering free fall of tears within his compassionate heart.

The fourth war of Archanea and the first experienced by the unified kingdom is badly lost. This ultimatum draws thin and sharp across their necks like a tripwire as the allied Archanean army is defeated at every turn by the Dolhr empire, rallied anew by the thrice revived Medeus. His forces accompanied by untold allied swarms of barbarians from Macedon and Anri's way that now marched on the capital alongside them, painting the cobbled white walkways of the Pales with blood every step along their way to the palace.

Where King Marth has cut his sacrifices where he can, seeing his pregnant wife, his sister, and best mate on a canvased wagon then fleet to the safer kingdom of Talys, Marth himself would not leave his castle as he originally promised them.

Rather than lose it a third time to invasion, here was the noble husband of a kingdom who would rather fall with his hearth and comfort his people in the only way that was even left. By remaining by their sides no matter the outcome. Kris is naturally always, unquestioningly with him, and this stood true for many of the kingdom’s knights.

After today, a third of them would be routed across the continent, another third fled with the queen and now de facto regent Caeda to Talys. The final third would choose to die with their king.

“Do you recall, Kris, how you settled my nerves at the Dragon’s Table, all those years ago? You spoke of a fortune teller who said you would live until a certain year. How it meant you would succeed at every task until the timely date you were due.”

Kris nods, a straight-backed shadow at the Hero-King’s side, though his face softened. “Of course, sire, and I recall the way your face grew bright as if uplifted of a hundred burdens.”

“Then give me another story like it, Kris. If you will.” Marth smiles expectantly atop his golden throne, hands clasped so politely over his crossed lap as if he were begging for a colorful anecdote during tea time. Not awaiting his inevitable murder by an organized army of Dolhrian rebels.

A little beyond their sector of the throne room, the battering rams crashed against the sturdy doors with a sound much like lightning splitting trees atop the Aurelis plains. Another chorus of shouts from stragglers of the castle garrison outside, more clashing steel and the sound of stomachs being gutted in turn. High-pitched screams of pain wrenched from men and boys. Kris would have clamped his hands over Marth's ears, but the man in question sits before him unbreakably calm with eyes of blue fire. Resigned.

The rebels seek a way in and they’ll have it, but Kris will have his time with his liege first. He answers honestly, nobly, as much as Marth has ever shown him. “I have none else to spare, sire. No more stories, and no more miraculous tricks of the war table. But I’m with you to the end.”

Perhaps his was an answer that was expected. His liege does not even flinch. “..Very good. That’s all I’d like to hear, Kris. I haven’t said it enough, how you’ve done plenty to make me feel like the happiest master in the world. You'll have to forgive me for that,” Marth says serenely, a voice too old and peaceful on a face still far too young. Still destined for all the fine gifts of peace, passion, and a great many things under any other circumstance.

"Never, sire. There is nothing to forgive in the slightest. I was lucky to serve you."

 _Was,_ a term in the past tense. Kris reflects on their ultimatum bitterly, how he could not do more for Marth who has given everything of himself to the world. His fingers tapped even with frustration at his thigh as he decides he’ll give no man or manakete the honor of killing Archanea’s truest king. The Hero-King, a mortal god and messiah. The death they’ll give him will not be gentle, or anything like how he deserves, if he has heard correctly of the Dolhrians' spiteful war crimes against his king’s late lord father, they will do the same unto the son.

Dashing his head from his shoulders after they’ve tired of his torture, or at his lack of reaction, because he knows that Marth would never scream. They might even humiliate him, sever the tendons in his sword hand and in his ankles, or take his body as lawless malefactors did to women and young boys dead or alive. Afterwards, they’d smelt the sacred gold of his crown, his tiara, into a quartet of horseshoes for his slayer’s mount, then string up his body for show in the manner of the executed Archanean royalty from the previous war.

Even at the advent of his twenty-fifth year, Kris swallows. Nervous in ways he hasn’t been since first budding on age eighteen and joining the Altean knights. His gloved hand settles cold and sweaty on the pommel of his personal dagger. A man of the sword but here a different weapon would find a greater, more sanctified use than he's ever imagined. “I’d like to be your knight until the very end, Marth. Please rise and turn around.”

His lord must know what he means, or at least he gives the impression that he does. Marth complies, lifting himself off from the throne on Kris’s extended fingers. His cobalt gaze shines as a crystal ball, wise and unfiltered as the archsage himself, but he can hear the teasing smile in his king, his forever prince’s voice. “..You’re awfully forward, my dear friend. Is this a mark of how far we’ve truly come over the years?”

Kris smiles back, only silently at first. Unsheathing his side weapon and making as friendly as he can from where Marth cannot see him, applying as little pressure to the edge of his dagger as possible while it poked experimentally around at the man’s back. Nudging between his clothed shoulder blades, tracing silkily along his flank, then the soft juncture beneath his armpit. Seeking the perfect place to sink and reach the heart. He doesn’t once consider the throat. That kind of wound was too improper, too rogue-like, and the patron god would deem it infidelity for a knight to deliver such a blow unto his beloved lord.

Said lord merely squirms in place throughout this process as if he were merely adjusting himself for his tailor and he admires the mental fortitude and grace that has carried him this far, through several near eternities of war and then some.

“I wouldn’t have minded relations of the sort with you, sire. Naga knows you’re an attractive man and somehow continue to be Archanea’s most desirable ‘bachelor’ despite being married.”

Marth’s laugh flows at that, like the string of a harp amidst the distant war cymbals beyond the open castle window and court ladies squealing in the courtyard as they were stuck like pigs. He turns red in the way that he always does after having a hard laugh, to the tips of his ears and down his nape, and Kris sees the soft white skin flushed to a charming shade.

Distantly, the doors to the throne room are bashed in again and the crack of wood sounds far more devastating. Splinters pebbling the floor. Close. They ignore it and Kris stares at the back of his king's neck.

The knight wonders if he might be able to get away with touching him for the base intention of it. Not simply to dress him in his armor, or to help him mount a tall warhorse, but simply because he could. Like clasping a hand over Ryan’s shoulder or bumping his fist with Luke or Roderick. Except something more, because Marth was always more than just a friend, or even a liege. Maybe because he was his light. But either way, Kris doesn’t. In the ways of decorum, they must always remain a king and his knight until their very last moments and it is late, far too late, to realize what else could have been.

“..I appreciate the compliment, Kris, but that’s not what I meant. In all your years of service, that was the first time you’ve ever called me by my name. I’d like to thank you for that. And.. For everything.”

“Of course, sire.. _Marth._ At the end of the world, this is as good a moment as any, isn’t it?” Kris says, feeling as if he were on the cusp of choking, but in a tone so light and breezy, Marth could imagine he still had a few more remarks left before the deed of his end was to arrive. One of his hands suddenly moves to Marth’s waist, pinning him in place. 

He hadn’t expected it and Kris more than counts on the king’s surprise to deaden the pain with the shock. From where he had hovered the dagger over the spot he marked with his thumb, between two of Marth’s ribs from behind, now he drove it into cloth and flesh. Clean and fast. Agonizing wordlessly at how a man so quick and clever, as a master duelist on the battlefield atop his experienced feet, could surrender so easily to a well-placed blade. 

The Hero-King burbles at the mouth with a start, wets the space between his feet with a drool of ruby blood, and dies the quietest death Kris has ever known. He crumples backwards into his arms and he carefully sinks them onto their knees, where this heavy, empty feeling of his liege calls out to him. Kris must follow. Marth cannot be kept waiting, cold and alone, and by his finest knight least of all. The dagger is drawn from Marth’s body, then wiped over his trousers, before he wrests open his collar and sets the tip of it against his own heart.

But first, he waits.

And waits.

Just a little longer, that is, for the anticipated crash of wood and detritus to the floor. Then when it occurs, soldiers of Dolhr and barbarians enlisted on Medeus's gold sickeningly swarming his lord's holy room of conference in search of two heads in particular, he denies them every satisfaction they have expected to have. Each and every one, down to the last. 

On the roar of his final war-cry, Kris ends it all.

 _"Glory to the Hero-King!"_ _  
_

**Author's Note:**

> gomen that hurt to write. maybe something spicy next.... Who Knows. anywho thank u for reading krismarth is my lifeblood


End file.
